Friday, May 22, 2009

A figgy pudding

How strange is it to be delighted by a documentary about AIDS activism?

Inspired, sure. Provoked, of course. Overwhelmed, probably. But it was delight that most infused my feelings about John Greyson's Fig Trees, which played at Inside Out this week. I was skeptical going in: I heard it was an opera. But the moment I saw the narrator was an albino squirrel--sometimes a real squirrel, sometimes a puppety one and sometimes a boy dressed as one--I knew that opera wasn't going to be taking itself serious.

Fig Trees juxtaposes the lives and works of two AIDS activists, Tim McCaskell in Toronto and Zackie Achmat in Cape Town, South Africa, through interviews, opera arias and experimental film techniques. Having admired McCaskell for a long time, I loved that the film found in him and Achmat two subjects who could embody some of the heroism of the personal side of social change but also two subjects who are critical of an individual's role, knowing that there there is so much more to be achieved by collective action. And they're both so forward-looking, neither have ever seemed tempted to say, "That's it, honour us now for all the work we've done." The film shares this resistance to self-congratulations.

So I loved the two people profiled. But I also loved Fig Trees' ingeniously eclectic style. There was AIDS and opera and an albino squirrel, yes. But there was also Gertrude Stein, palindromes, train sets and satirical music videos. Some of it was out of left field but none of it was random. I've seen a few things lately where their makers' tendencies to throw a lot of "stuff" at audiences seemed aimed at covering a lack of rigour in the writing process, as if a first draft was rushed into production. While I would not claim to understand all of the connections Greyson makes in the film, they are asserted with such inventiveness and purpose, I feel I have put my emotions and thoughts in the hands of someone who has thought things through. Fig Trees is frequently silly, but never shallow.

Even if audience members left with new (or renewed) disgust with corporate and government complacency in the face of HIV/AIDS, a deeper sense of the daunting task of the fight against HIV/AIDS, I don't think Fig Trees left any room for despair.

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